AT THIS COLLEGE, EVERY STUDENT IS A SENIOR

Twenty-five years ago Robert Hopp's parents dropped him off for his first day at Marietta College in Ohio.

"Here you are," Hopp, now of Coral Springs, recalled them saying. Sunday, it was his chance to reciprocate with his mother.

"I took them to college once, now they are taking me," said Gladys Hopp, 80, of Cedarhurst, N.Y., one of 41 students from across the country registering at the College of Boca Raton for a weeklong Elderhostel program.

The national program allows senior citizens to come on campuses, take classes, live in dormitories and eat cafeteria food. It also provides revenue from dormitories that normally go vacant during a semester break.

The College of Boca Raton is but one of 800 schools internationally that offer the chance for senior citizens to return to campus settings and lifestyles, said Robert McKinlay, coordinator of the college's Elderhostel program.

It's the second winter the college has hosted "Elderhostelers," as program participants are known. Last year, McKinlay said, it was the only winter program in Florida.

This year, four other programs are being offered around the state, he said.

The waiting list for the College of Boca Raton remains long, however.

At Elderhostel headquarters in Boston, McKinlay said, more than 600 people were shut out from one of the two one-week programs at the College of Boca Raton. The second one-week program will be run at the college next week.

Two selected, A.J. and Sadie Strickland, took three days to drive down from Trion, Ga. They have been to Elderhostels in Hawaii and Utah in previous years.

"So this year we decided to come down here and from here we are going to the one they are offering in the Everglades," said Sadie Strickland, 67, a retired first grade teacher. Her husband was the school superintendent for Trion.

"There are no texts, no grades. You don't have to attend (classes) but we haven't missed one," A.J. Strickland, 72, said.

"It is quite informative," said Sadie Strickland. There are other benefits, she added. "We've met a lot of friends. You meet most interesting people."

And the price of $195 for the weeklong stay for shelter, food and classes, is reasonable, they added.

While some students, like the Stricklands, were busy moving their luggage into their dormitory room at Sylvester Hall, others had registered, unpacked, and had made their way back down to the lobby to watch pro football playoff games.

Watching the televised games, meeting new friends, and getting ready for his sixth Elderhostel program was Maurice Storms of Lakeview, Arkansas, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee and insurance man.

"U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East or Lack Of" was the first course he took in an Elderhostel program six years ago at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Storms said.

"At that time it (the Middle East) was a turmoil and still is," he said. He and his wife Mary have attended four other Elderhostel programs since.

Watching the game next to him was Nelson Converse, 72, of Sumner, Iowa, where the temperature has ranged from 20 below to 10 above the last two weeks, said Converse.

"So you wonder why we came down here?" he said with a laugh.

Three classes offered, beginning today, are: "Issues of the 1980s: Politics, Monetary, Military and Social"; "Egypt, Sumer and Imperial Rome: Food and Ancient Cultures"; and "Taking the Byte out of Computers."